


Myriad Sins

by Oyyo



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Discussions of morality and revenge, Nirnroot abuse, Parental Death, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-02-01 04:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21380422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oyyo/pseuds/Oyyo
Summary: The Dragonborn makes an unfortunate realization about who Inigo shot in the forest that dark dark evening. For better or worse, she goes to the only person she can trust to be biased the right way - Langley.
Kudos: 19





	Myriad Sins

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, Caoimhe is pronounced Quay-vah.

Langley glanced up sharply from his journal, notes set to the side, as his doorknob twisted and opened. He could have sworn he had locked it, but in came the a heavily-bundled lump he identified as the Dragonborn. A khajiit who, like Inigo, did not speak in the third person. He glanced past her, but the only shape behind her was a wolf--the strange blind creature she insisted on carting around. Apparently named Scruffy.

"I do hope you haven't lost Inigo," Langley muttered, stabbing his quill as he dotted an _i_.

She didn't answer for a moment, huddled as she was near the fire, not even reaching to take her travelling gear off. The wolf wandered close and snuffled at Langley, hoping for a treat. Rolling his eyes, Langley glanced to make sure Caoimhe wasn't looking and slipped the wolf some jerky from his table.

"Oh, stop, he's going to become the fattest wolf in Skyrim between you and the Companions," Caoimhe said, with no bite in the words. Langley wondered how she knew, and then reminded himself that he didn't care. "No, he's meeting me in Dawnstar."

Absurdly, Langley thought she was referring to the wolf for a moment. "Quite." So, why was she here? She knew he didn't like her. The feeling was mutual, as far as he could tell. Langley gave her a dark look and shut his journal, sitting back and glaring.

"Mind if I smoke some meat? I'll share."

Langley waved a hand at her, not caring what she did. "Just clean up after yourself."

"Yup."

In short order, she had stripped off the bulk of her winter gear, leaving a simple set of trousers and a tunic. She quickly had a couple of skinned rabbits on the spit, as well as chunks of cut meat she had wrapped in skin. She built up the fire a bit and added a few logs of, if he was identifying it correctly, juniper wood. It smelled amazing. She gave Scruffy his own bowl to eat from, thankfully for the state of his floor. 

In the meantime, Langley had returned to the experiment he was brewing. If he was lucky, it would be a potent cure for chaurus venom. If not, well, it might be worth slipping into Caoimhe's drink anyway.

"Inigo told me you didn't believe I was the person he shot."

Langley stilled, and slowly looked up at her. Caoimhe was best described as a tabby - brown fur with black and white stripes. The flickering light of the fireplace seemed to make the colors move. He also, distantly, realized that huddled as she was, turning the meat, she was much smaller than she seemed standing up. The loose clothing did nothing to help that impression either.

Langley was not very good at reading people, but he didn't think she was upset. She wasn't looking in his direction at all, staring into the fire. 

"Yes. Given what he has mentioned about his state at the time, I would not find it shocking if someone were to take advantage of him." Langley scowled at her, but Caoimhe did not move. Neither did she look nervous, though one ear tilted in his direction.

"No, it wouldn't be," She agreed. Langley waited, and after a moment she spoke up again. "Has Inigo told you much about me? My past, I mean."

Langley wrinkled his nose. "What the two of you have been up to before you met me, but after the two of you started travelling together. He hasn't said much else." Further proof that she was a liar, in his opinion.

Caoimhe nodded. "It's true, I don't remember much of my past. Or didn't. My first memory was of waking up in a cage with my head aching, and then crawling out of a ruin."

"Hostage?" Langley asked, after a pause. Caoimhe shook her head. 

"Dunmer slavery. I still don't remember much of it, but..." The khajiit shrugged, still sitting cross-legged on the ground. "It wasn't so hard to believe, with the entirety of my past missing, that Inigo was the one who set everything in motion. I only had my names and some scattered memories."

Langley gave his experiment a stir. "That could have been caused by anything. The people who kidnapped you could have caused the memory loss." He did feel a little bad for her--he didn't know much of the slave trade, but it couldn't have been easy to go through. It didn't change his opinion on her, though.

"True, but he recognized me. My scent."

"A desperate mind seizing on the first person to pay attention to him in a non-negative way."

"It seems like a lot of coincidences to be explained away by that."

Langley put down his stirring rod. "Why are you here, Dragonbu--born? Just to justify yourself to me? You're Inigo's friend, he'll believe whatever you tell him." It wasn't supposed to be like that--he was supposed to be Inigo's best friend.

Caoimhe, rather than snapping back, brought her knees to her chest.

"I think you're right."

"I--what?" She could be remarkably unclear, for someone supposed to be so skilled with her Voice. "There's no need to rub your friendship with Inigo in my face--"

She shook her head. "No, not that. I don't think Inigo shot me." The meat had long been forgotten by this point. Langley stared at her.

"Why aren't you telling Inigo this? Why me?"

Caoimhe was silent for a long moment, looking down at her fiddling hands. The movement was oddly childish, but she was a bit odd. Inigo had once joked that the three of them could only be so friendly because they were all abnormal beings. Now, however, she just looked young.

"I remember why I came to Skyrim in the first place. I didn't have any skills, did you know? I was just fifteen, but..."

Fifteen? How long ago had she come to Skyrim? That said, what kind of khajiit was she even? She was humanoid, not digitigrade, but beyond that he didn't know. Langley took a breath to fire off his questions, but she spoke over him.

"I was looking for my mother. She was a mercenary." Caoimhe smiled, but it did not look like her other smiles had. Langley was abruptly reminded that, blundering idiot or not, she contained the most raw power most mortals would ever know. "I can't remember everything, but I was her firstborn. My first name is even hers--Iljun, but everyone called me by my middle name, after her mentor. She was a monk before she got pregnant with me. And, in her last letter, she said she was going to run a job for a noble. And that her fellow mercenary was a khajiit, with the most curious fur color. She promised to tell me more about him later."

She began laughing, and Langley shifted nervously, unsure how to react. 

"He killed my mom, Langley. And I don't know what to do."

Through the spasms of laughter, Langley saw tears. She was a kind of khajiit who could cry from emotion. Some could not. Langley set his tools aside, unsure what to say. He knew himself. He wasn't very good at any of this.

"Why me?" He asked instead, unsure. Caoimhe looked up at him, smiling so widely it seemed like her lips might split.

"You're--you're the only other person Inigo has as a friend for himself. All of our other travel companions are his friends because of me. I need someone to talk to who cares for him." The strange laughter had subsided, and she went back to staring into the fire. "Just for him, not for me."

Langley slowly nodded. Other friends would want her to do what was best for herself. "Despite anything he's done, the fact that you've come to me says... much about how you value him." The words came grudgingly, but it was true. He didn't have to like her, but he could acknowledge that she cared about Inigo.

Caoimhe nodded quietly, ears tilting back. "I don't know why it's so much worse than him trying to kill me. And it's not like the two of us haven't killed either. But... it happened and I don't know what to do." She scrubbed her hands over her face. "It makes sense. Everyone always said my mother and I looked alike, and even had similar smells."

"Just a moment." Langley stood and poked around his drawers for a pipe, and found his dried nirnroot. He took a few moments to grind it in a small mortar he kept for this specifically, and added a touch of lavender and catnip. He then packed it into a pipe.

As he went about his work, he kept an eye on the dragonborn, but she seemed disinclined to do more than stare into the fire. Scruffy had curled up nearby to sleep as well, pressed against her side but not seeming to care. Luckily for everyone, the meat was far enough from the fire that it would not be hurt by the neglect. Probably.

"Breathe this in and hold it as long as you can. It'll calm you, but this mix won't make you as giddy. Just one puff for now." Langley demonstrated himself, taking a deep breath from the pipe, holding it until his lungs hurt, and then blew it upwards. After a moment, she nodded and held her hand out. Then hesitated.

"I don't know any fire spells."

Langley raised an eyebrow. "You can't use your Voice?"

"That's different. It would burn the house down."

Langley shook his head, exasperated, and hauled his chair over. He would have insisted they sit at the table, but she seemed to like the fire. Instead, he sat and lit his fingers under the pipe, giving it a quick light.

"Breathe."

She did.

The two of them waited for ten minutes for the effect to kick in. For Langley, he began to feel a touch floaty, and his movements felt a little delayed. The colors in the room seemed heightened. For her part, Caoimhe had turned to stare at her own tail, watching it twitch with subdued curiosity.

"Now. Inigo killed your mother. But he's still your friend."

"My best friend." Langley nodded. 

"Do you want to kill him?"

"I..." Caoimhe cut herself off, looking down at her own hands. "No. I'm angry, but I don't want to kill him."

Not surprising, given she was here, but Langley thought that talking it out would help. The effect the nirnroot had was not exactly clarity, but a different perspective of one's own thoughts and experiences.

"Right. Revenge? What about his debt?" Assuming she was truthful, then yes, Langley had to agree that he owed Caoimhe a debt. Personally, he thought it was less of a debt than of Caoimhe was the one attacked. Then again, he had been told that he was not very good at the concept of loyalty, for a Nord.

"No revenge. I... I don't know if I can forgive him, though. Ma didn't deserve that. I was her only daughter, but... still." She sighed, and put her cheek on her chest. "I don't know if I should tell him. Inigo. It will hurt him, too."

Personally, Langley thought she was too invested in Inigo's feelings to not forgive him. He admitted he wasn't sure he would feel the same way.

"You should. He won't appreciate it if he found out you lied." Gods knew Langley was bad at keeping secrets. Not lying, per se, just bad at remembering what might be sensitive to other people.

"But he might feel even worse," Caoimhe said. Langley frowned a little, trying to understand. Caoimhe saw this, and straightened a little.

"If it was me he had hurt, he could atone directly. If it was a stranger, it would hurt him, but he would not be faced with what he did every day. If I tell him, he'll have to contend with the fact that he ruined more than one life when he killed her. I have--had little siblings, or sibling-like people? She wasn't alone."

Langley nodded slowly, watching the smoke twist up into the rafters. "But your mother knew she was doing something risky. She was the one who chose to fight while she had a family to support. It could have been anyone. And it wasn't exactly personal--Inigo did it because he was sick, not because of who she was."

Caoimhe didn't look convinced, but neither did she look angry. She sighed and leaned over her wolf, resting her head on his back. Langley sighed himself, and leaned back in his chair.

"I don't have any words that'll make everything better. But I think he would prefer to know, than not. If you would like, I can make sure he doesn't do anything...rash, if you must part ways with him again, the next time he's here."

Caoimhe nodded.

There was no resolution that night, nor the next. The sins of man were myriad unimaginable. Langley, Inigo and Caoimhe had all taken lives and disrupted families, and their lines of work promised that they would continue to do so. There were no easy answers.

But for that moment, there was peace

**Author's Note:**

> I adore Langley - I generally have a lot of affection for cantankerous old men. They're a bit like cats--incredibly fickle, but if you're respectful and calm (but firm as to your own boundaries), they'll be friendly to you. I blame my uncle.
> 
> Scruffy is a blind wolf that comes from...some mod. INPC, maybe? Or possibly immersive college of winterhold. He's awesome, but don't dismiss him anywhere near other NPCs who aren't your followers. He gets immediately aggro.


End file.
